The other is a work by the artist pair, Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, and was entitled “Drama Queens”. Like Ben-Ner’s work, they also used video as their medium with a concept of re-arranging the history of the 20th Century. This work featured 7 masterpieces from the history of 20th Century sculpture. Their styles ranged from Minimal and Pop to Post Modern.

In the video, the sculptures would move, speak, complain about things, make jokes, and even dance to the music. They had been taken out from the context of the museum as a place where they were usually kept, and were put on the stage of the local theatre, Städtische Bühnen Münster. (In this article, I will introduce the sculptures as subjective beings.)

Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, Drama Queens

Ulrich Ruckriem’s “Untitled (granite)” spoke broken English in a thick German accent and didn’t follow the conversations of the others much, when Jean Arp’s “Cloud Shepherd” answered everyone’s questions one by one articulately. Alberto Giacometti’s “Walking Man” complained that it didn’t like being rented out to other museums as it thought it was unfair for most of the other sculptures to be kept alone in dark storage where there wouldn’t be anyone else to talk to, while Sol LeWitt’s “Four Cubes” agreed quietly that it came across the same situation before and it couldn’t get much sleep then because of the constant sound of the equipment they kept for preservation.

Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, Drama Queens

Jeff Koons’ “Rabbit” was always up to the trend and always wanting to dance to Night Fever by the Bee Gees. Barbara Hepworth’s “Elegy III” agreed with “Four Cubes” that they both didn’t like rabbits that would shine that silver. But the “Rabbit” sighed that it had a hard time with the bank, the gallery owner, the investor and the art book publisher. The last one to appear, Andy Warhol’s “Brillo Box” fell down from the stage.

Through the conversations by all these familiar sculpture pieces that have always been in the books on the history of the 20th century art, this work also showed the background stories behind the history and the concept of how these sculptures had been made, as well as the transformation of the art world that surrounded such art works.